The invention relates to a water-steam cooled cyclone separator and, more particularly, to the fabrication of a roof for such a cyclone separator, where the roof is to be fabricated separately from the remainder of the cyclone separator.
Water-steam cooled cyclone separators are known. An example is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,904,286 of Magol et al., the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference.
For ease of fabrication and shipping, it is desirable to fabricate the roof of the cyclone separator separate from the remainder of the cyclone separator. The roof alone may weigh between four and seven tons and have a diameter of fifteen to twenty feet. Despite its great size and weight, the roof must be fabricated to close tolerances so that the individual tubes of which it is composed can be mated on site to the barrel portion of the cyclone. Adding to the difficulty is that significant internal stresses are present that tend to warp the structure as it is being made. These stresses arise from the welding operations that occur in welding the tubes to the header of the cyclone and in welding fin material and the like to the tubes in order to form gas-tight surfaces. This effect even further adds to the difficulty of fabricating a cyclone roof.